Laptop Trolley. Policy for usage?

[reggiep]

Well my school have had a laptop trolley for a year now that has never, ever been used. The LEA tech support set it up for the school and it just never worked.
So I arrived at the school and although I hate laptop trollies, due to past experiences, I thought I would have a go at setting it up.
Anyway it turns out that the laptops were built to connect do a different domain so I rebuilt them and changed the wireless access points and now it all seems fine.

BUT my question for everyone is does anyone have a policy or a sheet of A4 stuck to the trolley with advice for the users?

I just want to get everything as right as possible before the mob get hold of them!

Thanks

[FN-GM]

We just work on the principle that if they get damaged it will be billed to the department who damaged them.

[SteveB_NI]

I can't really help re. damage as we're lucky here that the pupils & teachers respect the equipment but I can offer advice re: movement of the trolley.

We are about to implement a policy of encouraging staff + students to move the trolley themselves - I have done it myself for the past year but now we have got 4 trolleys on the go this task has become impossible to do alone.

The policy is this: 2 trolleys to remain centralised within 2 departments at either end of the school - these are moved & accessed by the relevant technician / teachers.

2 general trolleys (the heaviest Lapsafes) are to be released from their secured store in the morning by myself & taken to their first booking of the day (regardless of whether they are not being used until noon, 1pm or whatever). Teachers + students as appropriate move the trolley from then on, until the last period of the day. (teacher checks the online system & identifies where the trolley is to be collected from). I then return the trolleys to the store for overnight charging.

I have kitted each room out with an extension lead & a network cable extension to prevent the trolley having to be wheeled "through" the classroom, instead it simply sits just inside the door of the classroom. This minimises disruption when the trolley is being collected.

I have attached signs in the classrooms indicating the laptop trolley connection points & also provided adequate instructions & signs on the laptop trolleys.

I will let you know how this movement policy works over the coming weeks if you wish

[jcollings]

Here:

1. The trolleys belong to departments or groups of departments. They are entirelly responsible for movement, charging etc.

2. We service them once a term (or ad hoc if someone screams) and bill departments for damage.

Personnally I hate them. We have reasonably good kids but they still wreck keyboards on a regular basis!

We abandoned the idea of the trolley having a wireless point that staff plugged into a wired point in each room as they were incapable of doing it right.